A/N: So, a lot of you have questions, namely, how old R&L are—you'll find out in this chapter. Also, the first chapter and this chapter are set in the "present" which for this story is the future. Chapters 2 and 3 were flashbacks to the "past" which is 2014. Confused yet? There will be more flashbacks, and they won't necessarily be in order because who remembers things sequentially? Thanks for all the love for the last chapter, especially writermeAL and dont-stop-believin, and the others who've followed since Everlong, and thanks to all the new readers, too. This one is back to the future, so it's darker, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own anything, not the show, not the characters, not the songs. I am not affiliated with nor have met anyone depicted in this fictional story. Song credits to Florence + the Machine and Pearl Jam.

Rating: M for mature language and themes

Times Like These

4: it's hard to dance with the devil on your back

I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,
I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky, but why
Why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?

-Black, Pearl Jam

He sat out on the water, his surfboard buoying him up in the calm sea as he looked towards the horizon at the rising sun. This was the first place he wanted to come after spending the whole day in bed yesterday sleeping off that flight. There was serenity only the ocean could bring him. And there was a special place in his heart for this particular stretch of Pacific Ocean. He needed to be out riding the breakers, and only here did everything feel right with the world. He may not ever find happiness again, but at least he was at peace. The water was cold, cold enough to make him feel something, which was always a plus nowadays. It was quiet, 6 AM was early for most people, but he loved that moment when he was in the pitch black, the darkest before the dawn.

He liked the anonymity of the early morning. No one cared who he was out here. He was just another beach bum, quietly riding the waves out here by himself. He didn't have much private time, mostly because of his family, but also because of his fame.

Fame. He had a love and hate relationship with it. It was something he had sought after relentlessly in his youth, and now that he'd attained it, was it really worth it? Fame gave him everything, but it took everything away. Well, it took the important things away, like privacy and love and normalcy.

What he wouldn't give to be "normal." Well, maybe he didn't want to be completely normal, but sometimes he thought he'd like to go back to a simpler time. What he really wished for was to go back and change things. If he could change things, maybe his life would resemble something close to what he had always pictured for himself. He knew millions would kill to be in his place, but would they if they knew the ultimate price they had to pay?

Honestly, he felt the life had been sucked out of him, his innocence and youth gone. The Disney machine had chewed him up, spit him out, and wrung him dry once he had given them all he could. He missed the days when it was pure and actually enjoyable, before it became a job he had to get through. He yearned for the days when he was just content, before things got fucked up and hard.

Before he had screwed up his life.

He was being ungrateful as usual. For every moment he resented, he knew that his family had benefitted. That was his internal struggle. R5 continued to be pretty successful, with the support of the loyal R5 family bolstering them through the years. They'd actually had a big mainstream hit off their third record that had helped them sell out shows all over the world and given them their first gold record. Even though the fanfare had died down a bit as their fans grew with them, their fifth album continued to climb the charts, even as they finished touring to support it. It was amazing that they had come so far, since the third record almost didn't happen.

He had done everything in his power to fuck that up. He was stupid, inconsiderate and unkind in his youth. He dragged his family through his hell and made it theirs. As the entitled brat he was at 19, he treated them like shit. Sometimes he still paid for it, they couldn't completely forget about the many times he'd lashed out at them, blaming them for his issues. If you twist the knife enough, the festering wound won't be able to ever quite heal without leaving a big scar.

There were times when he wanted to quit the band and quit everything. He'd tried, unsuccessfully, to stage a smear campaign against himself, destroying everything in his path, including the trust of those closest to him. He'd been careless, reckless, and self-destructive. It was by some divine intervention that his reputation hadn't suffered as much as he had wanted. They had good public relations people to sweep things under the rug. Even at his worse, even after every show when he would get into knock down drag out fights with his siblings, the public was blissfully unaware. All they saw was the happy façade that was put up, and Ross had to admit, even though he wasn't acting full time, he sure as hell earned his SAG membership.

Although, the most horrible thing was, he couldn't quite remember all that was said and done in those heated moments. That was the worst, since they remembered everything. And it wasn't that he was fucked up out of his mind or in some weird altered state all the time. He just mentally shut down, barely there in spirit as it was happening. He was numb and in a haze from which he could not emerge. It was like his brain just skipped a bunch of pages in the book of his life. He shut it all out. It was frustrating for him, but more so for his loved ones.

Sometimes a snippet of a memory would come back to him and honestly, it meant nothing. It was like watching a movie of someone else's life. He went through the motions, but his actions and words did not matter during that period. His life felt like it was over. The girl he loved left him broken, and so he had to be broken. He had to inflict the pain that he felt on others, so that they could know. Everything was so fucking exaggerated back then, every breakup the worse thing to have ever happened to anyone in the history of mankind. Humans, especially teenagers, are inherently selfish. He was no exception. He thought he was so fucking poetic and dark and emo, but he was really just a little dipshit. Like those before him, depressed and looking for an outlet, he'd gotten caught up in himself.

There were days where he had convinced himself that he could not go on doing this. There were days when he would just sit on the bus and not speak to anyone. Literally, not one word would emanate from his mouth. Then there were days when he would just leave after the show and return right before they had to leave. There were days when music did not interest him. Nothing did.

No one knew where he went or what he did. Sometimes he just wandered off alone. Sometimes he felt so lonely that he just had to be around people, no matter how vapid and shallow they were.

But even that lost its charm.

He had gotten very good at posing with that shit eating grin, pretending that he was fine, that everything was fine, when there was a war raging inside.

She wasn't the reason for all of it, of course not. He would never give her that much satisfaction. It was a combination of things, and if there was someone to blame, he had to mostly blame himself. After the show ended and they'd gone their separate ways, he'd felt aimless. He always thought he would be so happy when the show was over, free from the binds that tethered him to a place he didn't really want to be, career wise. But instead he felt purposeless. With A&A, he had always had a schedule, a place to be, a script to read. He always had something to come back to, and people around who actually cared about him.

Suddenly, he had all this time. Time he didn't know how to fill. And the people he trusted and sought advice from were no longer there everyday. And okay, most importantly, she was gone. Because he had fucked up.

The days all blended into each other. The nights were all a blur of nightclubs and new girls. There was no accountability. That was dangerous for a young man of means.

He had been so confident in his youth. Too confident. The bravado and arrogance had belied his true self-consciousness. When all the shit went down with her, he felt like he was thrown down into a tailspin. He lost a little bit of himself and the road to recovery was littered with untrustworthy types who tried to steer him down each poorly lit blind path. That was a sobering experience in itself, trying to figure out who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. There were more villains than heroes, that was for sure. And he learned quickly that he was no longer the invincible boy he thought he was. He was vulnerable to heartache and loss and pain. And to think all of this could have been prevented if he hadn't let his ego influence his decisions.

It was so strange to think of how much had changed. In the six years since that everything happened, he was now a completely different person, hell, he thought he had evolved a lot over the past year. He didn't even party anymore. He rarely drank. He'd always kept his nose clean; that was a promise he had made to Kevin and Heath when he finished Austin & Ally. They'd seen too many sad stories before him, and he didn't want to be another statistic kid star. He had come close, but he'd made it through because of his family.

The choices he had made in his youth had fucked up his life completely. He'd let himself get seduced by temptation. He had been manipulated. He hadn't thought things through. He let outside influences get to him, and instead of working his way through situations calmly, he'd messed up, big time. He'd been rash, careless, and what he had done was unforgiveable in her eyes. It was crazy how a couple of bad decisions could affect the rest of one's life so negatively. He knew that now, everything that he'd gone through had matured him. But with maturity often comes jadedness and bitterness, and that was his present reality. One thing he was sure of, he would never put his heart into anything as much as he did with her.

It was a protective mechanism. He just wouldn't be able to survive if he were to be broken again.

He thought about her then, wondering if he ever slipped into her subconscious. It was still so hard to try and push her out of his mind, as evidenced by the sleepless plane ride he had to endure a day earlier. Try as he might, her presence still persisted, and he hated his brain for its betrayal. Who could blame it, she'd always left quite the indelible impression.

He thought about her again last night when he had finally hit his head to the pillow of his own bed. He dreamt about the nights they'd spent in each others arms, limbs tangled, her peaceful face buried in his bare chest. Her eyes were so wide, so expressive, he could see the whites around her irises. He'd memorized every crease of her face, tracing it endlessly in the dark. They were so young and carefree, and he had no idea how easy it was back then.

There was an innocence and purity to young love. There was nothing like it. There was no worry about social pressures, how much a person made, what they did or tax declarations. There was no anxiety about finding one's life companion. There was no bullshit. You were just together because you felt something for the other person, passion, admiration, desire, you just simply wanted to be around them.

A long time ago, he realized that his happiness was tied to her. And when she left, an emptiness plagued his heart. He felt sorry for all the girls who thought they could fill his mind and replace her. No one ever would. He was able to fool everyone, be spotted with different girls, holding their hands, showing affection. It was for her to see that he was moving on. It was all a show that he had perfected.

He remembered the summer breeze drifting the smell of her shampoo around him. They had fun, he loved to tease her, scare her. They'd ride on his motorcycle, even though she wasn't supposed to, and she'd wrap her arms around him so tightly he couldn't breathe. But that was the way he preferred it. So close that they couldn't be pried off each other. Then when she developed the courage, she let go, her arms stretched out wide, trying to take flight from him. He should have seen it coming.

He remembered the way she used to look up at him, like he was her star, but she didn't know at that time that it was the other way around. He'd always known she was smarter, prettier, more talented and driven than he would ever be. Everyone always knew it.

Sometimes he watched the old episodes of A&A and he remembered what it felt like to be in that moment, to love her. They were little time capsules that took him back to a time when things were good in his life. He could not have that back.

It had been one year since the last time they'd seen each other. Their encounter had hit him like a jolt of lightning, flipping some unconscious switch inside him. It had previously taken five years to start the healing process, but then one little glance set him back eons. How she still had that power over him, he did not know. Although brief, that meeting brought him out from his stupor, made him feel something again, even though the feeling was mostly anguish. It stirred up old emotions, which was dangerous, especially when the feelings were most likely unrequited.

Seeing her then motivated him. He made himself a promise that night, one that he kept buried away in his mind to think about during solitary moments like this, a promise that he hoped he would be able to make good on.

He paddled like hell, standing up on the board, balancing on the nose, feeling the swell beneath him. He rode out the wave, immediately paddling back out to repeat this over and over again. There was something soothing about the repetition of his movement. He actually felt in control, even though the ocean was a completely unpredictable thing.

He saw Riker emerge from his house and look straight at him. He gave him a signal to show that he was okay. He was tired of the constant supervision by his family, but they were so afraid he'd fly off the handle again, even though he was now 25 and not 19. He watched himself for them; he didn't want to bring his family down his path of destruction again.

They'd been very wary when he'd informed them he had rented out a house in Malibu for the summer, wishing to write and work on the upcoming record on his own. He needed to be here, in this place that was filled with memories, this place that held special meaning for them. He also needed privacy, some alone time, but that had raised red flags with the record execs, their publicists, agents and managers. It had especially raised the eyebrows of the members of his family. He'd reluctantly agreed to let at least one of his siblings stay with him for the majority of the summer.

You fuck up once and everyone gets on your shit.

To be fair, it wasn't a little fuck up. Disappearing, cutting off ties to everyone was grounds to make people worry about your well being. It's grounds for making people question your sanity.

If they only knew that during that time, he was questioning that himself.

A/N: see reviews do make me more motivated to update sooner :)